This new CD presents a selection of baroque instrumental music for Christmas, performed by ensembles including La Petite Bande, Musica Fiorita, Capricornus Consort Basel and Ars Antiqua Austria.

The Christmas music of Baroque period presented here is not the cosy charm of candles, the Christmas tree and "Silent Night" that emerged in the 19th century, but music which presents true festivity and joy. The feast of the Lord's birth was to be duly celebrated, and it is the numerous Christmas oratorios and cantatas that express this.

Alongside festive pieces with trumpet, pastorals are without doubt the most common and popular form of baroque Christmas instrumental music. They depict the adoration of the shepherds, for which composers enthusiastically took inspiration from folk tunes or shepherds' songs, either in the original form or freely to give their compositions a similar touch.

Writing in the late 18th century, the Italian violinist Nicol Pasquali said, in his homeland every family had a crib with the infant Jesus. At Christmas humble musicians and shepherds would go from house to house with their instruments, playing in front of it for a fee. A similar Christmas tradition can still be found in Rome, where shepherds and musicians from the surrounding countryside play outside homes, in front of shrines to the Virgin Mary.

On this recording we find music by Arcangelo Corelli (Concerto grosso in G minor, Op.6 No.8, "Fatto per la notte di natale"), Francesco Manfredini (Sinfonia da chiesa op.2 No.12 "per il santissimo Natale"), Georg Philipp Telemann (Trumpet Concerto in D major), Antonio Vivaldi (Concerto in F Minor, RV 297, L'Inverno, "Winter") and more.